Thursday, March 23, 2006 at 9:54 AM

Man, I hate being sick, it really brings down the entire system, you know? He I am, barely recovered from the knee thing and all ready to start blogging again, and this freaking sinus-cold-cough-throat thing comes along and just beats me down! Anyway, enough with the excuses, here is what I got for today.

Tigers - all the regulars are back and Leyland says he wants his team to have a "swagger" about it. Not, as he put it, a "rah-rah" high fiving cheerleader type swagger, but a business like approach to the game where they feel, without actions or words, that they are going to have a chance game in and game out. I like the guy, I really do, and I hope that the Tigers listen to him this time, as opposed to their last manager. I think Tram's biggest thing was not that he was a bad manager, but his lack of inexperience really did him in with the veterans, they just didn't listen. The line up, if healthy and on paper, looks pretty damn good and the pitching staff should be another year older and wiser. Looking forward to Tiger baseball, as always, but like I said earlier I think somewhere around .500 will be good enough for me and should be about all that is expected.

Pistons - it was nice to see them all but throttle Wade last night, but like Flip said, this game won't mean a thing come May and June. I agree with that totally, but all the same, it was nice to see the Pistons put the choke hold on Wade. Unless something totally unforeseen takes place, I think it is safe to say the Pistons have the #1 seed all but locked up in the East. That being said, I still don't see any one team in the East taking the Pistons out in a seven game series, especially when they have home court. Sorry, just don't see it. There are 15 games left for the Pistons and there are two up (in the loss column) on both Dallas and San Antonio for the #1 seed overall. The Pistons can not complain about "boring" games anymore, out of those 15 remaining games 11 are against teams headed to that playoffs. In order, the games go: at Indy, NJ, Dallas, at Philly, Milwaukee, Phoenix, New Orleans, at Miami, at Orlando, Indy, Cleveland, at Toronto, NY, at Milwaukee, Washington. 15 games, 11 against playoff teams and 9 of them at home. I would be happy with a nice 11-4, 10-5 push considering that 4 of the 6 road games should be "gimmie" games - Philly, Orlando, Toronto, and Milwaukee. At Indy on Friday and at Miami on April 6 should be interesting, to say the least.

Lions - all I have to say is why are the Raiders interested in Joey? I mean, could you picture Joey as a Raider? Don't you think Joey would piss himself on a daily basis and curl up in the fetal position in some corner of the locker room? Sorry, Joey as a Raider, I could care less where the kid ends up but that, even from a Joey hater like me, would just be dead nuts wrong to do to the kid.

Well, that is it for today, I will check back with all of you soon - the sports dude.